New Scheduler:
The new scheduler should be used in addition to the old scheduler from 1st December, 2011. Assuming all is well, we will discontinue using the old scheduler from 1st January, 2012. But please ensure you make your December, January and February bookings on both schedulers to ensure that you get to conduct your scan as planned. Calpendo will be the primary scheduler, Bookit will be the backup, but if we run into a problem during December then it may become necessary to reinstate Bookit as primary at short notice. Watch the 3 T email list for updates.
Old Scheduler:
Please note that this isn't a fully mature program - we ran into developer issues, partly as a result of the campus financial changes - and there are one or two bugs (see below). To get an account on BookIt you must have passed the safety quiz and submitted a Request for Scanner Training form. You will be assigned Trainee status, allowing you to view the schedule but not make reservations. Your status will be changed to a regular user, allowing you to make reservations, once you pass the user quiz (assuming you have a current CPHS and your PI wants to pay for your scans!).
Known Scheduler Bugs:
The custom program we use to make reservations and do scanner billing has several known bugs. The most common is the disappearance of existing bookings, which can happen when you are navigating in the calendar view. (For some reason Bookit displays alternating biweekly periods of bookings; two weeks of bookings, two blank weeks, etc.) The solution is simple: click the 'Schedule' button whenever you navigate in time in the calendar view and all existing bookings will be revealed.
Bookit doesn't handle spring forward and fall back time changes very well. Similarly, you will find the calendar view is off if your computer's date and time isn't set to the local BIC time (Pacific standard or summer time, whichever is currently applicable).
To make a reservation near a daylight savings time change, the safest approach is to use the GUI to make the reservation that you want, then once it's created double-click back into it to check the start time is as you intended. If it is, you're done. If it's an hour out, change it to what you intended. Now your done. If the calendar view appears to show your booking at a different time than you've selected, ignore the calendar view and instead trust what you see/saw when you double-click into the actual slot.
Finally, some browser/OS combinations don't seem to work very well, especially when trying to make a new booking. I will try to post specific failures here as I am made aware of them. For now, I have heard that Bookit doesn't work well on Chrome.